The ecological fallacy: some fundamental research misconceptions corrected

Thomas L. Magliozzi, Robert D. Berger and Kevin J Clancy

The ecological fallacy, the drawing of inferences about individuals based on aggregate level data, was discovered over 50 years ago but is still present in a surprising number of commonly employed marketing and advertising research tools.

The Ecological Fallacy: Some Fundamental Research Misconceptions Corrected

Kevin J. Clancy Copernicus Marketing Consulting and ResearchPaul D. Berger and Thomas L. Magliozzi Boston University School of Management

The purpose of this article is to show how the ecological fallacy - a problem discovered by W. S. Robinson (1950) over five decades ago - is present to this day in a surprising number of commonly employed marketing and advertising research tools, seriously undermining their validity. Before Rob­inson, sociologists routinely used ecological stud­ies to determine relationships. For example, it was commonly...

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